


Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall, Civil (or sporting)

by Slant



Series: Townsville Futility [3]
Category: Le Mythe de Sisyphe | The Myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus, Sports - Fandom, Sports RPF
Genre: Existentialism, F/F, Gen, Haecceity, M/M, Philosophy, Political Theory, Quiddity, Social contract
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 09:00:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slant/pseuds/Slant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall, Civil (or sporting)

**Author's Note:**

> I have no genius for visual arts, so please immagine that this is the Leviathan frontispiece with the crosier replaced by a hocky or ice-hocky stick and the symbols in the triptych replaced with various sporting paraphanalia.

Half time in the locker room. The scent of black coffee and cigarettes is heavy in the air. Some of the players have cooled down enough to put on their berets.

"What is the whatness that distinguishes between a team and an unconnected group of individuals? How does it manifest?"  
"When it is gone, where does it go? How may its absence be seen or inferred?"  
"Does it come from elsewhere? Is it built, by trust and experience? Our corporate owners would also like to know if it is fugible?"  
Polite laughter.

"So we will experiment. Look around the room. See your fellow players. When you go out to sport, you will go not as individuals with high and lonely destinies but as a socially-constructed meta-creature. When you aid the other players in the sportsing, you will work together as the organs of a single body."

"Our goals must have the cosmic significance of the dying spasms of a fluttering flame, but they are the goals we have chosen. We have no hope that in sport there is some transcendent meaning to be found, but our struggle is meaning enough. To sport may be absurd, but it is an absurdity that we embrace. To sport as throughly as we may in the face of the absurdity of so doing, is the whole of our choice."

"To give ourselves utterly to sporting is to give ourselves to each other, for teamwork is the essence of our sport. We shall play not as individuals exchanging aid against a host of foes but as separate but mutually dependant parts in the body of the great Leviathan."


End file.
